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Japanese & American Management Styles

le to give an appearance of group decision-making while retaining real control in the hands of management. In general, these measures -- even the relatively serious and sincere ones -- have met with only limited success. Japanese management, it has been found, is too deeply rooted in Japanese culture and Japanese modes of thought to be readily importable into American business culture. Thus, even Japanese firms operating in the United States have been prone to adopt what might be called "window dressing" measures (Byham, 1993, pp. 3-9).

Americans, for example, tend to be amused or perplexed by such Japanese customs as having workers sing a corporate anthem at the beginning of a work day. In American eyes, such practices are irrelevant to the actual business of conducting business, and American managers and workers might feel vaguely silly engaging in such a practice. Viewed in the Japanese context, however, the corporate anthem is not an isolated thing in itself, but one form in which the overall Japanese conception of a work enterprise expresses itself. The corporate anthem is not a narrow loyalty-builder, but a mode in which a pre-assumed loyalty finds a natural expression.

In the remainder of this essay, a number of specific contrasts will be identified between American and Japanese approaches to management. Once these contrasts have been identified and examined, a common thread will be found to run through them. Put briefly, American managers and workers view themselves as working for an enterprise, whereas Japanese managers and workers view themselves as part of an enterprise. This distinction is not absolute. Some American firms, such as IBM, have a long tradition of paternalistic, extended-family corporate culture that has some features in common with Japanese business traditions.

In a crunch, however, American firms like IBM stand ready to abandon these traditions for the sake of a more secure bottom line; i...

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Japanese & American Management Styles. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 12:38, March 28, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1692276.html